Bloodchild

by Anna Stephens

  Valan sucked at a split knuckle as he studied her. ‘Mention my family again and I’ll let the three outside come in here and do what they like to you,’ he said, his tone so casual it took her a second to process his words.

  Tara didn’t have to pretend to look frightened. ‘Your will, honoured,’ she said.

  Valan grabbed her by her shirt and hauled her off the cot, expression twisting to rage again, as fast and unexpected as summer lightning. ‘Now you play the good slave? Now, after you attacked the Blessed One? After you crossed swords with me and tried to get Rill out of the city? I would have given you everything!’

  There were tears in Valan’s eyes more frightening than anything that had gone before and a cold, sick dread swamped Tara. ‘Honoured … Valan … please.’

  ‘You’ve ruined everything,’ he breathed into her ear, his cheek pressed to hers. Metal hushed on leather as he unsheathed his knife and Tara stumbled back, but the cot was in the way; there was nowhere to go.

  She felt the blade, cold as death, slip beneath the hem of her shirt. ‘I’m sorry, honoured. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, forgive me, I beg you,’ she babbled, because keeping him talking was one thing, but being carved open was something far different. ‘I’ll do anything.’

  The knife scored a cut along her ribs and Tara yelled and threw herself backwards on to the cot, got one leg up in a sort of barrier, but Valan scrambled on to her, evading her kicks, and pressed the edge of the knife against her throat above the collar.

  ‘Don’t.’

  The cell door banged open. ‘We’ve got him, Second. It’s done, over. We’ve got the leaders and killed those who wouldn’t surrender.’ Valan didn’t break eye contact with her.

  ‘Major Vaunt?’

  ‘Yes, Second. Alive as requested.’

  Valan pressed the knife tighter as she moved on instinct. ‘Good.’ He put away the blade and leant forward, his belly against hers. ‘Take something from me,’ he whispered and kissed her mouth, ‘and I take something from you.’

  Tara lay on the cot facing the wall, beneath a stained blanket stiff with blood. She was watching the slow and stately progress of a spider as it spun its web in the corner for the flies that came to feast on the filth of the prison-barracks.

  She’d been watching it for hours, unmoving as it created intricacy and beauty from nothing. From itself. If she stayed very still, and watched very hard, it was almost possible not to think – about how she’d failed, about what they’d done to Vaunt. How he’d screamed.

  Valan was a different man now; there was nothing in there Tara recognised, nothing at all from the months she’d lived with him. All the cruelty and ruthlessness that the Mireces were famous for, which had seemed so lacking in him, the second who laughed and drank with her, who used her name as though she was a person, not an object, who casually asked her opinion and trusted her, was now distilled into its purest, poisonous essence and directed at Tomaz – to punish her.

  Tara bit the inside of her cheek – hard – and focused on the spider. A fly alighted on her cheek next to her eye. The lid twitched and it droned away. Don’t go far, little winged nuisance. Spider’s hungry.

  Three days so far, three days Valan had made her watch as the Mireces beat Tomaz into broken pulp. Three days during which they didn’t even question him, didn’t care what intel he had, what Tara offered to make them stop, even when she offered herself.

  Three days they had bound her hands behind her head and walked her into Vaunt’s cell and hadn’t hurt her. Not even when she asked to take Tomaz’s place or she threatened to end them all. Three days and Tomaz was barely human. Three days and the betrayal on his ruined face – the blame – had done its work.

  She bit again, the skin raw and swollen, soft wet scabs inside her mouth, impossible to heal. The spider had finished another circuit of its web, building it that little bit bigger, delicate hairy feet placed so carefully only on the spokes, never on the veins between.

  The sounds he made as they hurt him, as they forced themselves on him, the threats that became howls that became the sobs of a broken, traumatised thing far removed from the man she knew as three of them held him down and jeered, the fourth grunting away with a red face, his gaze locked with Tara’s, lips writhed back in a smile, part pleasure, part hate.

  Tara’s palm slammed into the stone wall next to the web, three times fast and hard, deepening the bruise already blackening and swelling the heel of her hand.

  The spider froze, its legs retracting. The web shivered, and Tara imagined that if her ears were good enough, she’d hear it jingle, a soft chiming like moonlight on water. She wondered what it sounded like to the spider when a fly flew into its trap.

  Punishing Tomaz to remind Tara of her place. Reinforcing that she was property. A thing.

  No. Not reminding me of my place. My place is pissing on their graves that I put them in. They’re reminding me who I am. What I am. And what I will do to them.

  She could still see Tomaz, still hear the echoes of his screams. One more tally to cross off, one more debt to pay back a hundredfold. Her own injuries meant nothing in the heat of her rage, a rage that would consume everything it touched. Because Tara was a fucking soldier and she would do her duty and that duty was to save Tomaz and kill Valan and every man who had hurt him. Kill them over hours, over days, kill them for every dead slave, every raped body, every lost child. Kill them until even she was glutted.

  She blinked, eyes gritty from staring at the spider and its translucent, ephemeral web, its home built in squalor, its private slice of paradise amid her misery.

  Duty.

  Her spine protested as she rolled slowly on to her back, and all the many deep hurts, inside and out, woke at once and screamed for attention, as they’d done every day since this all began. Since they’d left her alive. Since they’d made her so very, very angry.

  Tara gathered them in, all the hurts and humiliations, pulled them to her like armour, and she promised them vengeance.

  MACE

  Tenth moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus

  The hill, edge of Deep Forest, Wheat Lands

  ‘Oh aye, they’re there, plenty of sentries, no fortifications as yet,’ Dalli said when she and the rest of the Wolf scouting party returned to camp. Any relief Mace felt at her safe return dissipated with her words.

  She wiped rainwater from her face and snuggled into the blanket Jarl passed her. There’d been no let-up in the weather for three days and they were all of them soaked, cold and miserable, the leg-breakers and traps they’d laid in the ground before the hill filling with water, the grassland between sucking at their boots.

  ‘They know we’re here, but they don’t seem to have any intention of marching up to meet us,’ she added. ‘About five miles south.’

  ‘Warlord, Chief, I want your best and quietest warriors,’ Mace said into the depressed quiet of his council. ‘Jarl, send a squad of sappers with them to probe the ground, and then get in there and sow a little silent mayhem. I want them waking up next to corpses tomorrow morning. Let’s see if we can’t provoke them into charging the hill, eh?’

  ‘The Wolves have the trees on the western slope and the base of the hill and you, Warlord, deploy just above them,’ Hadir continued, pointing out the positions on the crude map they’d drawn on the wall of the tent. ‘You’re the link between the Wolves and the Ranks and we need you to hold that line or they’ll be cut off. As for the summit, Thatcher, you’ve got the centre; Jarl on the east. Physician, we’ll require a field hospital on the flat at the rear; you’ll have men to guard you.’

  The Warlord examined the map while he combed his beard with his fingers. ‘Good plan,’ he said. ‘And we hold these positions day and night until the battle comes? These killers we send in at dusk might provoke them a little too well.’

  Mace gave him an approving nod, more pleased than ever not just to have the fifteen hundred warriors on his side, but that Brid Fox-dream and Cutta Frog-dream
knew the business of war as well as they did. He sucked his teeth. ‘Numbers?’

  ‘Difficult to say,’ Dalli said. ‘We didn’t get a full look through the weather. But from the spread and layout, I’d concur with Crys’s previous estimate – around four thousand.’

  ‘Well, no offence but let’s assume you’re both wrong and they outnumber us two to one, because I think we all know this is the final gambit. We have to win, so I want us going over all the options. How do we neutralise their numbers? And, at the same time, how are they going to try and prevent us using the terrain to our advantage?’

  ‘They’ll try to counter our archers for the initial approach,’ Crys said when no one spoke. ‘They’ll be under sustained arrow volley for most of the ascent, so the main body will carry their shields overhead while the front rank holds theirs to their chests in case we send arrows flat down the slope. They’ll have their own archers on the flanks to try and keep ours pinned down. Might even send a second force through the trees first, get us to move our archers around and open up a gap they can exploit.’

  ‘Then our archers need to be mobile from the start. If you stick them behind wicker screens, they have to stay there or risk getting shot moving to a new location. Give us some Rank shields we can hide behind and we can shoot from wherever you need us,’ Ash said.

  They went over the details twice more, teasing out plans and options, settling on a series of manoeuvres to counter suggested attacks, though when it came to it, it’d be the officer in the line who made the decisions based on the flow of battle. There was only so much these councils could plan for.

  The night was deep and the Krikite and Wolf ambushers had been gone some time before Mace called a halt. He stretched, groaning as his back clicked and a yawn rippled around the group.

  ‘Any final thoughts?’ Mace asked.

  Ash coughed and held up his hand. ‘The, er, the other thing, General – Your Majesty? That we spoke about yesterday?’

  Mace puffed out his cheeks, caution warring with instinct, but Dalli was nodding at him, her brows drawn together at his hesitation. Her words came back to him: Tara would want you to, even if you don’t. This is for her as much as them. Best to do it before the battle too, in case we’re all dead.

  The corner of his mouth quirked at that. Ever the romantic was Dalli Shortspear. A grin spread over her face at his expression. He cleared his throat and blinked away tiredness.

  ‘Gentlemen. And ladies,’ he added belatedly. Brilliant start. ‘In light of recent events and the sacrifices that are even now being suffered in Rilporin and elsewhere, and in honour and memory of those we have lost, Wolf and Rilporian alike, I have drawn up a law – the wording’s a little rough, I have no idea how to properly announce these things – a law, in my capacity as both Commander of the Ranks and king-elect …’ He stumbled to a halt.

  Colonel Jarl and General Hadir exchanged alarmed glances. The Warlord evinced little more than polite interest, but Ash was watching him with unblinking intensity.

  ‘Witnessed and agreed by Gilda Priestess as the only surviving member of the council of priests,’ he went on doggedly, and Ash’s growing excitement was enough to lighten his tone, ‘I hereby declare that there is no lawful impediment to women joining the Ranks and serving in combat, as Major Carter has done and is no doubt doing even now with honour and fortitude.’ And complete disregard for her superiors’ orders.

  Ash’s face fell and Crys frowned, puzzlement creasing his features. ‘What’s wrong?’ he began.

  ‘Furthermore,’ Mace said, turning to face him and Ash, ‘the old-fashioned and ridiculous law against the marriage of couples of the same sex is hereby repealed. And I think, Major Tailorson, that because of that fact, Ash Bowman would quite like to ask you something.’

  The silence that fell in the tent was part disbelieving, part outraged, and a little delighted, but the shock and dawning panic on Crys’s face made it all worth it. Ash took his hands and knelt, the effect spoilt as his knee squelched in the sodden ground. ‘Crys Tailorson, heart-bound, love of my life. Will you marry me?’ he asked and there was a tremble in his voice he didn’t try to hide.

  Crys’s mouth opened and closed a few times and Mace couldn’t help but smile. Dalli’s small, drenched figure pressed to his side and he slid his arm around her blanketed shoulder, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. ‘What do you think? Us next?’ he whispered as Crys nodded in mute agreement and dragged Ash out of the mud and into a tight embrace. There were ragged cheers.

  ‘Still no,’ she said. ‘If I marry you, King Mace, and it’s a big if, you manipulative git, I’ll do it after we’ve won. If I don’t marry you, well, I don’t have to wear the stupid hat, do I?’

  ‘It’s called a crown, my love,’ Mace said and her lips twitched as she tried to hide a smile, ‘and believe me, we’re getting wed.’

  ‘Oh, are we now?’ she began and he lifted her off her feet and kissed her, but then Gilda was bustling into the tent and peremptorily ordering everyone around, grinning so wide he was surprised the top of her head didn’t come off.

  Gilda prodded him in the arm and he put Dalli down with an embarrassed chuckle. ‘Thank you, Sire; it’d be a shame if the King of Rilpor missed the most significant wedding in his country’s history – and one that will set a precedent among Rilporians that Wolves and Watchers have known for generations – because his tongue was down the Wolf chief’s throat.’

  A blush heated his face, but Dalli was laughing and shooing the priestess away. ‘Go, go, marry the fools before one of them comes to their senses,’ she said, but from how tightly the two men were holding hands, sense didn’t seem to be something they were worried about.

  Mace snapped to attention, his staff following suit with expressions ranging from stolid disapproval to open delight, and they all stood quietly – stood as witness – as Ash Bowman, archer and Wolf, married Crys Tailorson, officer and god.

  Whatever happened next, however long his rule lasted, Mace knew he’d done something good with his time as king. Or king-elect, anyway.

  CORVUS

  Tenth moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus

  Five miles from Deep Forest, Wheat Lands

  The pretender to the throne had laid his battle lines with care, expecting Corvus to walk into them and die like an untrained fool. Corvus didn’t. He pulled up his army with five long miles between them and Koridam, and he set his own lines, placed his sentries and sent his scouts to check for movement. And he waited.

  Koridam wanted to force a swift conclusion to this war; Corvus should probably want that too, but he had time before the Dark Lady’s return to play cat and mouse for a while. The East Rankers had brought harvested crops, livestock and flour with them from Yew Cove, Shingle and Three Beeches, and the Wheat Lands were well named; his army wouldn’t starve.

  Corvus had roughly two thousand Mireces and the same again in East Rankers. Not a huge number, but scouts put Mace’s forces at about the same, maybe fewer. It didn’t seem like a lot to decide the fate of a country, but neither side had any more forces they could draw upon. This was it, the final, all-in gamble, only Corvus knew he held the winning hand, gifted to him by the gods Themselves. Still, over-confidence was unwise, hence his decision not to rush the enemy’s position.

  The hill Mace was perched atop like a cock on a shit heap was the only elevation for miles and it was backed by the leading edge of Deep Forest – a clever avenue of retreat if they needed it. A small outpost of the forest cloaked the base of the hill to the west and that, no doubt, would be where the Wolves and some of the Krikites were stationed. The rest of the Krikites had the slope from the trees to the summit, with the Ranks commanding the top. It was simple and so it would work – unless Corvus could disrupt those lines, draw forces away from each other, separate the Wolves from the Krikites and the Ranks from everyone.

  Fortunately, he had a plan to do just that. And afterwards, when the war was won and the Dark Lady returned i
n the body of his niece? Afterwards, Corvus would focus on rebuilding his army from converted warriors, Rankers and farmers to protect Rilpor from Listre and Krike. He’d rebuild until he was strong enough to take those lands for the Red Gods, for the Dark Lady who would walk this land clothed in flesh and related to him by blood, a link none would dare to question. He and Rill would rule together, united in love of the Dark Lady, reaping the rewards of all She had promised.

  And he’d sire himself a few heirs, on his sister and others. That business with Valan had made him realise his legacy needed to be secured. Tett was a good second, but Corvus wanted his own blood to sit the throne after him. A dynasty like the Evendooms had been, only stronger. The line of Corvus, blood royal and blood divine, a line that would last forever.

  No, Corvus was more than happy to wait as long as he needed to before the final battle. Everything was falling into place.

  The king’s good humour vanished as Baron, the new general of the much-reduced East Rank, trotted over. ‘They have the better ground, Your Majesty,’ he said, not for the first time. ‘I doubt they’ll give it up.’

  ‘If they have the better ground, why the shit am I going to fight on it?’ he growled. ‘We wait.’

  ‘Your plan is to lure them here?’

  ‘My plan is to wait and respond to events as they unfold. If they want to force my hand, they’ll have to do more than sit on a hill in front of a forest.’ He stared at the distant green and brown smudge. ‘That said, if they send scouts, we kill them. Kill anyone who comes within range. We don’t want them getting a good look at us.’

  Baron looked as if he disagreed, but kept his opinion to himself. ‘Yes, Your Majesty,’ he said instead, saluted and marched away.

  Tett was nearby, fixing the handle on his shield. ‘Do you have a plan, though?’ he asked without looking up.